Lyndsay is the President and Founder of WiseAnalytics, an independent analyst firm specializing in business intelligence, master data management and unstructured data. For more than seven years, she has assisted clients in business systems analysis, software selection and implementation of enterprise applications. Lyndsay conducts regular research studies, consults, writes articles and speaks about improving the value of business intelligence within organizations. She can be reached at lwise@wiseanalytics.com.

August 2008 Archives

Last week I expressed my frustration at the lack of cohesion between organizations saying their customers are their main priority and actually creating business models that use technology to complement those statements. However, there are obviously organizations that are doing a good job as well. But as data management and data governance activities become more important, many organizations will start to shift towards a centralized view of information to provide an overall picture of their customer, supplier, product, etc.

Even for early adopters and organizations that have recently started these initiatives, the day when organizations have captured all the information that is valuable and actually derives benefit through better customer management programs or through analytics is still a little ways off. Luckily, many organizations are on their way and have developed pockets of data management initiatives within their organizations. However, there are few examples (and none that I can think of offhand) of organizations implementing a full organization wide master data management program...realistically, these programs may never exist, but to keep up to date with market and technology changes, pockets of it will have to.

Constantly speaking to vendors about their product offerings gives me a good overview about what could be, basically what the ideal situations are concerning how organizations can use technology to enhance their overall customer experience. Consequently, I live in a dream world - on the one hand knowing what technology exists and how it should/could be implemented (i.e. the use of an MDM or CDI hub to create one view of the customer), and on the other hand dealing with large organizations on a daily basis that have no clue that they are missing the boat (my bank for one!).

With the abundance of technology you would think that a person wouldn't have to change their address three times when they move and be told that credit card information is housed separately (making that time number four), that Internet banking is limited because your accounts and disparate portfolio items can't be connected, or that certain bills can't be paid online or through an ATM (every once in awhile a person has to vent)...I definitely don't consider myself a millenial, but do realize that if a bank or other organization thinks of a person as an account and not as a person with diverse needs, wants and interests, then as the current population ages and the business world is replaced by people who are used to interacting with technology in a way that they control as opposed to having access to only incomplete and archaic processes and information, many leading organizations will be replaced by companies that actually value their customers.

Although many organizations say they value their customers (because without them they couldn't exist), the reality is that based on the lack of customer centric processes guiding my personal interaction with a leading Canadian financial institution that is probably good compared to most of their competitors, a general gap exists between the lip service and actual attention to detail regarding the value placed on the customer experience.

I'm obviously biased because I constantly think of what could be, but as people start to interact with technology differently, their expectations also change. Hopefully, organizations will also start to change to focus on how customers interact with their environment as people and not as various account numbers, etc.

Recently, I interviewed Steve Miller from OpenBI and Nick Halsey from JasperSoft for podcasts on DashboardInsight about open source business intelligence and the changes that have occurred in the market over the past couple of years.

As open source solutions are becoming more mainstream it is always interesting to get insights into changes that have occurred and views on where the market is headed. One area highlighted, which crosses over what is being seen in the general BI market, is the increase in usage of column oriented databases to increase capabilities regarding speed of analytical processing. Not only have more vendors appeared within the market, but more vendors are building their data warehousing platforms using open source technologies on the backend. This lowers the TCO and offers end users more bang for their buck. In addition, open source BI vendors are partnering to provide end users the ability to analyze larger data sets faster increasing the benefits of BI to the business.

In addition to the podcast for Dashboard Insight, OpenBI, JasperSoft and Infobright have put together a joint Webinar about this topic.